A Weblog Teaching & Learning System - Part 3.

OK, so it's not a 'learning management' system because you can't manage learning! You need to have a user management system and even content management systems as part of it, but a 'learning' management system. Perhaps not. Toyed with the idea of a 'learning facilitation system' but I think that's a little weak as it's not solely a learner tool and although the main aim of the system is to facilitate effective learning... there's a fair amount of teaching & other stuff going on too.

And 'facilitating' sounds naff :o)

So, it's 'A Weblog Teaching and Learning System' ... any suggestions for how we could replace 'system' or am I pushing the boat out a little too far there?

What's with the Aggregation?

Figured that now would be a good time to deal with another possible aspect of the system, the use of aggregators & their benefits for both instructors & learners. So:

Instructors (course weblog):

• Aggregator of leading news sources / weblogs in 'professional readings' so learners (& the instructor) have regularly updated contextual knowledge relating to the course (VERY exciting and VERY different to the average course today)
• Aggregator of members of class weblogs (a community aggregator shows what each learner's up to / thinking about etc. building community & shared knowledge)

Learners (course weblog):

• Aggregator of professional new sources they particularly enjoy :o) (saves unproductive flooding & allows selective decisions... all sources can be aggreated in the instructors weblog for reviewing)
• Aggregator of their particular courses (so they can keep up to date with recent instructor postings / discussion etc. This kind of 'push' functionality is absolutely key!)

Hmmm... can think of more but best to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid... as they say down here in Oz :o) for the moment. It's also important to remmber that both learners and instructors have their own 'home' weblogs where they can aggregate anything they like! Some things, like updates from courses they are taking, might even be better aggregated to taht (or that as well).

Right, am going to try and set up some aggregation into WebCT now, saw it somewhere (well, aggregated it actually :o) but lost link.

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]
1:27:28 PM    
  
A Weblog Learning Management System - Part 2.

OK, so having stumbled around a bit regarding the 'whys' here's how it might work:

1. Instructor creates their own weblog (a bit like their own office)
2. From this office they then create a course weblog(s) for the subject(s) they teach
3. This is automatically registered as the course weblog for that course by an academic management system (AMS)
4. Students create their own weblog (a bit like their study room)
5. From this students create a weblog for each course they are enrolled in.
6. These are automatically linked ('blogrolled' and RSSed into a community aggregator) to the instructors course blog by the AMS.

And you're ready to go...

One possibility:

1. The instructor posts a 'spark' on their weblog, as the AMS has subscribed the students aggregator to the instructors RSS feed, students are notified.
2. The students visit the instructors weblog and participate in emoderated & free asynch & synch discussion through forums / chat environments linked to the 'spark'
3. The students reflect on and explore issues through their course weblog. These are aggregated in the 'community aggregator' area of the instructors weblog. Other students & the instructor visit this to see what people are up to & browse resources & thoughts of the memnbers of the class. (Of course they can post them themselves, discuss on the weblog etc.)

Pretty simple and pretty cool I think. Anyone out there interested in exploring this further? Making it? :o)

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]
1:21:00 PM    
  
Blackboard and Student Publishing.

XPLANA: Blackboard and Student Publishing. Quote: "Blackboard lets faculty members share documents with students, but it does nothing to promote web publishing by students."

Comment:This is a question I've seen from WebCT refugees: Where is the student publishing element?  There is no easy answer. [Serious Instructional Technology]

Absolutely! Although I don't see how WebCT excels here either... I'd be interested to know though!

[James Farmer's Radio Weblog]
1:18:49 PM    
  
Xplana. Xplana up and running and looking good! [James Farmer's Radio Weblog]
1:05:36 PM    
  

Step-by-step primer on RSS.

What is RSS?

RSS is a protocol, an application of XML, that provides an open method of syndicating and aggregating Web content. Using RSS files, you can create a data feed that supplies headlines, links, and article summaries from your Web site. Users can have constantly updated content from web sites delivered to them via a news aggregator, a piece of software specifically tailored to receive these types of feeds. RSS is the hottest thing in Web communication. It powers many popular applications such as weblogs, knowledge management networks, and news syndication.

Weblogging, a term coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997, is one of the most popular and fast growing applications of RSS. A blog is someone's personal dated 'log' frequently updated with new information about a particular subject or range of subjects.
[State of Utah Government Information Locator Service]

This is oriented toward weblogging, but it does a good job of explaining how to build an RSS feed.

11:04:42 AM    
  

XHTML Syndication Module.

Abstract

This document is meant to document the Syndication module for XHTML. This module defines a namespace and arttibutes that live in that namespace that allow an XHTML web page to be syndicated.

Motivation

The motivation for this document is to do away with RSS as a seperate file format. If web publishers and CMSs want to participate in content syndication then they have to produce two versions of their front page, the HTML version and the RSS version. A careful inspection of XHTML and common web practice shows that most of the information need to do syndication already exists in web pages published today. What is needed is a little extra information to make syndication possible.

[Joe Gregorio]

This is from July 2002. More to study. Not everyone likes RSS.

10:58:52 AM    
  

Userland knows how.

John Robb says Tiernan Ray is all wet. OK, John -- show me how to structure knowledge in weblogs so that I can find something when I need it without having to look through back logs and archives for a half hour.

10:21:14 AM    
  

Tiernan Ray: Why Blogs Haven't Stormed the Business World. [Scripting News]

This is a great summary of the problems I have been pointing out for the past two years. Weblogs as they are now are just not good knowledge repositories. Without indexing or metadata and no convenient way to find what you're looking for, they remain like my Moleskine notebook - repositories of the moment, collections of ideas and memoranda. I read about one man who actually created a little index on the last few pages of each of his Moleskines, but that is a time-consuming effort that only hits the high points of what is on each page, or indexes pages to dates. In Radio, I have tried to do some organization with Categories and it is a similarly messy way to do the job. After months (over a year, actually) of this, I could no more quickly find a specific citation in my weblogs than I could do handsprings across the office. Plus I have deleted all entries and started over again in frustration at least twice. If there are back archives of what I dropped, I have no idea how to get to them.

So, I love my weblog(s), but as journals and notes and a way to capture what is going on day to day, but not as repositories.

9:43:27 AM